Description:Synthese spans the topics of Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Coverage includes the theory of knowledge; general methodological problems of science, of induction and probability, of causation and the role of mathematics, statistics and logic in science; and the methodological and foundational problems of different sciences. The journal explores symbolic logic and foundations of mathematics relevant to the philosophy and methodology of science; and those facets of the ethics, history and sociology of science which are important for contemporary topical pursuits. The journal focuses on the role of mathematical, logical and linguistic methods in the general methodology of science and the foundations of different sciences.

The journal includes a section on Knowledge, Rationality and Action as a
platform for researchers. The scope of Knowledge, Rationality and Action is
interdisciplinary: it will be of interest to researchers in the fields of
artificial intelligence, agents, computer science, knowledge representation,
game theory, economics, logic, philosophy, mathematics, cognitive science,
cryptography, and auction theory, as well as to application specialists using
formal and mathematical methods and tools.

The "moving wall" represents the time period between the last issue
available in JSTOR and the most recently published issue of a journal.
Moving walls are generally represented in years. In rare instances, a
publisher has elected to have a "zero" moving wall, so their current
issues are available in JSTOR shortly after publication.
Note: In calculating the moving wall, the current year is not counted.
For example, if the current year is 2008 and a journal has a 5 year
moving wall, articles from the year 2002 are available.

Terms Related to the Moving Wall

Fixed walls: Journals with no new volumes being added to the archive.

Absorbed: Journals that are combined with another title.

Complete: Journals that are no longer published or that have been
combined with another title.

Abstract

Patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) are often described as having impaired ability for planning and decision making despite retaining intact capacities for explicit reasoning. The somatic marker hypothesis is that the VMPFC associates implicitly represented affective information with explicit representations of actions or outcomes. Consequently, when the VMPFC is damaged explicit reasoning is no longer scaffolded by affective information, leading to characteristic deficits. These deficits are exemplified in performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) in which subjects with VMPFC perform significantly worse than neurotypicals in a task which requires them learn from rewarding and punishing experience to make decisions. The somatic marker theory adopts a canonical theory of emotion, in which emotions function as part of a valencing system, to explain the role of affective processes. The first part of the paper argues against this canonical account. The second part provides a different account of the role of the role of the VMPFC in decision-making which does not depend on the canonical account of emotion. Together the first and second parts of the paper provide the basis for a different interpretation of results on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). In fact the IGT may be probing a deficit in what has been called mental time travel: the ability to access and use information from previous experience and imaginatively rehearse future experiences as part of the process of deliberation.